Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün fe‘ūlün

Senüñ derdüñden ey şūḫ-ı cefā-kār
Belā bu kim ne saġam ben ne bīmār
Ne gül ḳalur bu gülşende ne ġonçe
Gerek sen göñlüñ açuḳ tut gerek ṭar
Ṣabā bu reşkden kim öpdüm izin
Özin yirden yire ursa yiri var
Ḳamu aġyāra yār itdi teraḥḥum
Baña ne yār raḥm eyler ne aġyār
İder ‘āḳilleri Mecnūn Baṣīrī
Ḳaçan kim ‘ışḳ dersin ide tekrār

In English

1. O cruel coquette, the calamity that your pain has brought on me is this: I am neither well nor sick.

2. In this rose garden neither rose nor bud remains; keep your heart open or keep it narrow, as you will. (The opened rose is likened to cheerfulness and the closed bud to a heavy heart. Neither joy nor sorrow lasts.)

3. If the morning breeze, out of jealousy that I kissed the beloved's footprint, dashes itself from place to place, it has good reason. (The saba is the wind that blows along the beloved's path; the poet has kissed the footprint in its stead.)

4. The beloved has shown mercy to all the rivals; but to me neither the beloved nor the rivals show mercy.

5. Whenever Basîrî repeats the lesson of love, he makes the wise into Majnuns, that is, he drives them mad.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a ghazal (gazel) of five couplets in the hezec family of aruz (quantitative metre), in the pattern "mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün fe‘ūlün"; the edition does not state the metre, which emerges from scansion. The ghazal has no redif (refrain word); the rhyme is the sound "-ār": cefā-kār, bīmār, ṭar, yiri var, aġyār, tekrār. The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet. The ghazal is number II in Ahmet Kartal's edition. To whom and when it was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The ghazal opens by describing the suspended state in which love leaves the lover. He is neither well nor sick; his pain does not kill him, yet it does not let him recover. The words "Belā bu kim", the real calamity is this, present this uncertainty as the heaviest pain of all. In the second couplet the words turn to a maxim: in this garden of the world neither the opened rose nor the closed bud remains. The openness of the rose and the narrowness of the bud correspond to a heart at ease or oppressed; the poet says that both states are passing. The contrast between rose and bud, open and narrow, is the basis of the couplet.

The third couplet is the most skilful in the ghazal. In divan poetry the saba, the morning breeze, is the wind that passes along the beloved's path and carries her scent and dust. The lover has kissed the beloved's footprint; so if the wind, in jealousy, dashes itself "yirden yire", from place to place, "yiri var", it is in the right. The use of the word "yir" first as "place, ground" and then in the idiom "yiri var", it has good reason, forms a pun (cinas). The wind's blowing and gusting is also likened to the movements of someone dashing himself about in jealousy; this is an example of hüsn-i talil, giving a poetic cause to a natural event.

The fourth couplet rests on the contrast between yâr and ağyâr, the beloved and the rivals. The beloved has shown mercy to all the rivals, while the lover has received mercy neither from the beloved nor from the rivals. Kartal mentions this couplet among those in which Basîrî gives voice to the beloved's torment and cruelty. The last couplet presents the poet's own love as a lesson: as Basîrî repeats the lesson of love, the wise become Majnun. The word "Mecnūn" means both "mad" and Majnun, Leylâ's lover; the contrast between reason and madness is joined with this double entendre (tevriye). Kartal also cites this couplet as an example of Basîrî's view of love.

Bibliography

Online sources